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Lunasin, a 43 amino acid peptide, suppresses chemically induced transformations in mammalian cells and skin carcinogenesis in mice. This peptide has also been reported to exhibit very good bioavailability after its oral administration. However, despite its biological and medicinal significance, the exact three-dimensional (3D) structure of lunasinis thus far not yet fully characterized. Thus this work is aimed at exploring the conformational profile of lunasin,using classical molecular dynamics (MD) simulations at the time scale of 300 ns. The results obtained from the MD trajectory reveal that lunasin has a strong propensity to exhibit three characteristic a helical bundles in its structure supported by residues His5-Cys10, Cys22-Ile30 and Asp35-Asp41. The reported cell adhesion motif (Arg-Gly-Asp) of lunasin responsible for its binding to cell chromatin, on other hand, did not exhibit any characteristic secondary feature. The structural information obtained from the current study could be useful to better understand the bioactive conformation of lunasin.

Dr. P. Singh gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Durban University of Technology and the National Research Foundation for the position of a Research Associate. K.B. gratefully acknowledges the experiences and insights gained from the Spanish collaborators (Professor Juan J Perez and co-workers) - through the SA-Spain bilateral agreement. The authors would like to express their acknowledgement to the Centre for High Performance Computing, an initiative supported by the Department of Science and Technology of South Africa.